When Is A Campaign Ad Not A Campaign Ad?

By Brooks Jackson/CNN

WASHINGTON (April 15) -- Whatever else happens this year, voters are witnessing a flurry of issues ads -- TV spots produced not by candidates, but other groups, including political parties, labor unions and independent organizations.

Many of the ads are slashing, even if they don't come right out and say: "Don't vote for Bill Clinton" or "Don't vote for Bob Dole."

A Republican lawyer told the Supreme Court Monday that negative ads like these are not campaign ads and should not count against the political parties' spending limits.

In fact, attorney Jan Baran argued, the court should strike down those very limits as a violation of the political parties' right to free speech.

The case goes back 10 years. Democrat Tim Wirth was running for the U.S. Senate when the Colorado Republican Party hit him with a negative radio ad that accused him of talking one way and voting another.

Said the ad: "Tim Wirth voted against every new weapon system in the last five years. And he voted against the Balanced Budget Amendment." (96K WAV sound)

Because the ad did not specifically call for Wirth's defeat, the party claimed it did not count against the limits. But the Federal Election Commission disagreed and said the ad put the party $15,000 over what it was allowed to spend supporting the GOP candidate. And a federal appeals court agreed.

At today's hearing, Solicitor General Drew Days asked the high court to uphold that finding and the spending limits on parties "in order to prevent corruption or the appearance of corruption."

Justice Antonin Scalia was skeptical. "Is it corruption to induce a candidate to support certain philosophical principles?" he asked Days.

A decade ago, Democrats complained about the anti-Wirth ads, but now they're running millions of dollars worth of similar ads attacking Sen. Robert Dole (R-Kan.). One of them intones: "The president cuts taxes for 40 million Americans...Dole votes no."

Meanwhile more and more non-party groups are beating election law limits, like the AFL-CIO's ads attacking Republicans or the Christian Coalition's voter guides critical of Democrats.

"For all intents and purposes, special interests are already unlimited," said Anthony Corrado, a political scientist at Maine's Colby College. "What the Colorado Republican Party and both national parties are asking is they also receive the same treatment."

If it happens, Republicans say the voters would gain. "If we win, that will give them more information; it will give them a greater basis to make a decision," attorney Baran said. "Hopefully, it might even encourage them to vote."

But Wirth, who watched today's high court arguments, said the voters would lose.

"Now as a matter of public policy, do we want to have more money running more negative campaigns on more narrow issues? And I think the answer to that should be no," Wirth said.

While the high court ponders, spending on negative ads that skirt the campaign laws is this year's hottest trend in campaign finance.

This story originally appeared on CNN's "Inside Politics."

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